


Thoughts Sicker Than My Temperature Rising

by coffeerepublic



Series: wherever you're going, i'm going your way. [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5657629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeerepublic/pseuds/coffeerepublic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nita is not herself when she is sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts Sicker Than My Temperature Rising

**Author's Note:**

> Have a quick sick( )fic.

One otherwise uneventful morning, MacCready woke up on his own accord. That in and of itself should not have been strange. And it would not have been, had he not spent the past several months travelling with a certain vault dweller named Nita.

Nita, lovely, loud, energetic Nita, who was usually up at sunrise and had long since taken to waking him up because she could not stand to be idle for too long.

But not today, and it was unnerving. With a groan, he sat up and attempted to rub the sleep from his eyes with one hand before looking across the room (if you could call it that with only about 60% of the walls intact) at the spot she had chosen for her makeshift bed.

There she was, turned towards the wall and thus away from him. Apparently she had her knees pulled to her chest which made for the endearing image of a small heap of person covered in blankets.

He had noticed before that she liked to curl up in order to fall asleep, but he had never once seen whether or not she stayed like this until the morning. After all, she had been awake before him every single day until now. Which brought him back to the problem at hand. Cute as it was, he could not help but be a little worried at how unusual this was for her.

“Nita?” he tried, voice hoarse from having just woken up.

No reaction.

“Nita, are you all right?” He made a second attempt, louder this time.

And this time around he was rewarded with a quiet, unhappy noise from her side.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

The same noise, a little louder and with a lot more suffering in it. It would have been cute if it had not sounded like she was carrying the weight of the world.

He took that as a cue to get up, foregoing getting fully dressed in lieu of walking over and sitting down next to the blanket hill that was his boss. Her back was still facing him, half of her face hidden beneath the fabric of her blankets, the other half obscured by her hair.

He reached out and rested a hand on the spot that seemed to be her shoulder though he could not be entirely sure.

“What’s wrong?”

She mumbled something he was not able to understand. He felt tempted to reach out and brush her hair from her face – maybe he would be able to better hear her then. (Or maybe he just liked the idea of touching her hair, though that was not the type of thought he allowed himself to have.)

After a short internal discussion with himself, he decided to go for it. She seemed a little out of it anyways and surely would not interpret anything into it.

Upon feeling his fingers brush her temple, she cracked one eye open to look at him but quickly pressed it shut again.

“Headache,” she mumbled. “Everything too bright.”

So that explained a thing or two about her uncommon behavior.

He would not have guessed that she of all people would be the type to succumb to a small physical ailment like this. He had seen her get hit in the head with a pool cue, shot at more times than he could count and even thrown around by a deathclaw. But this was the first time he had seen her show the slightest bit of weakness. (It almost made him feel a little honored to be let in like this. He was fairly certain that it was a function of how much she trusted him.)

“Are you getting sick, boss?”

Her forehead did feel warm. He noticed too late that he was touching her again, but decided that if once was okay, two would not make a difference.

When he pulled his hand away, she made another quiet, disapproving noise. Without thinking, he put it back. The next sound was one of contentment.

“Cold. Nice.”

She paused. It seemed as if she needed to collect her strength in order to be able to continue speaking. 

“I’ll… be right up. Just need to… wait for this to pass.”

Her eyes opened again, both this time around. He pulled away his hand.

She tried to sit up, but her arms were shaking under her own weight. It was pitiful, really. (And it made him want to protect her. But he did not even know to name the feeling yet.)

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to fight through the Commonwealth if you’re not at your best.”

She gave up, dropping back down and curling up again. This time around she was facing towards MacCready however.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

He realized his words may have come out sounding more critical than he had meant them to. 

“Don’t have to be. Just try to sleep it off.”

She did not reply. What she did do, however, was to curl up again. With the position he was sitting in next to her, she ended up wrapping herself around him a bit.

If she curled up just a little more, her head would have been in his lap. (He decided to stop that thought process before even considering where it might have ended up going.)

Silence settled upon them.

After a while, MacCready thought she might have fallen back asleep and decided to get up and make breakfast for himself. As soon as he moved, he felt her legs press against his side a little tighter.

Not asleep after all.

“Stay. Please.” Her voice was the quietest whisper. (Normal Nita would never say something like that. He would have to pick his victories where he found them.)

He stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> I still have the headache, but at least now I've also something written. ♥


End file.
